Shiny new teeth concocted from mice and human urine

IS A missing tooth ruining your smile? Here's an unlikely recipe for cooking up a replacement – all you need is a mouse and some of your own urine.

Duanqing Pei from the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Guangzhou and colleagues took stem cells from human urine and used them to grow teeth inside mouse kidneys. The stem cells, implanted under the outer layer of the mouse's kidney, transformed into dental epithelial tissue, which develops into the enamel, while the rest of each tooth was formed from mouse cells (Cell Regeneration, in press).

Pei claims that a method for using mice to grow teeth containing only human cells "could be easily designed".

This article appeared in print under the headline "Mix urine and mice to get new teeth"

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